The Art of Pamela Colman Smith

Pamela Colman Smith never became well-known as an artist and, without the Tarot deck she illustrated, she may have fallen into total obscurity. Stuart Kaplan, president of U.S. Games, Inc. says he could have made her a millionaire.

The only comment from Pixie Smith about the creation of the tarot deck was in a letter to her mentor Alfred Stieglitz (click on the letter to see a larger version).

You can see much of the artwork of Pamela Colman Smith at these sites (thanks especially to Roppo and Holly Voley for their efforts to make Pixie’s work available to the rest of us):

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Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me HERE.

30 comments

Pamela’s letter to her mentor is heartbreaking. An artist of such vision and talent, yet so destitute and desperate, crying out for money she had already earned but never been paid! Of course, hers was and is a common predicament in the world of artists (or, I should say, for the artists of the world).

Craig –
The attitude in that day was that women in professions were taking employment away from men who needed to support their families. There was a serious, though unacknowledged, surplus of ‘spinsters,’ and no one knew what to do with them. Stieglitz’s own attitude seemed to be that it was crass to discuss money—of course he had enough to think so.

Tania –
One of the designs would have been that for the back of the card—alternating roses and lilies like what appears on the so-called “Original Waite” edition (the faces were taken from a later printing known as Pamela C). Pamela may also have created a title or info card that was never used. Decks are printed on large sheets that are later cut apart, so there is actually room for 80 cards. Alignment of a back-design with borders becomes difficult and so the roses-and-lilies back has rarely been used. The blue plaid (taroteé) design one usually sees is not so finicky in printing alignment, it doesn’t reveal reversals, and it doesn’t show scuff marks and scratches. Some of the earliest decks have what’s been called a “brown pebble” back. You can see a collection of card backs here.

I notice that the nickname given Pamela Colman Smith by Ellen Terry, “Pixie” is being used more and more today by writers when in reference to PCS rather than her given name.

I wonder if this was a nickname she either “liked” or “just put up with”. I say this because information indicates that people oftentimes did not take her seriously as she appeared “childlike”. I know that just because a person appears “childlike”, the person is not necessarily an adult also, but rather such individuals are just fortunate enough in addition to having become an adult, also fortunate enough to maintain a sense of “childlike” innocence.

In Smith’s poem “Alone”, her feelings about her association with other people definitely gave her the feeling that she was really never taken seriously by the fellow adults with whom she worked. She apparently never had any further associations, with those influential adults from Steiglitz to Ellen Terry who gave her the nickname of “Pixie” years earlier when PCS was desperately trying to establish herself as a serious artist.

I don’t ever notice PCS being referred to as “Pixie” in any references of her later life, after leaving the art world she worked with until her conversion to Catholicism around 1913. Her later associations were primarily with the small Catholic community that attended the Masses held at the Chapel she had built in her home, named, “Our Lady of the Lizard”. There is one reference where she ran from the presence of William Butler Yeats, but that has never been explained as to what the complete situation was really all about that day in her life.

I know how undesirable nicknames, regardless of how “cute” they may seem, are not a welcome attribute to the beneficiary. Any ideas from fellow readers on just what PCS really thought of the nickname “Pixie”, and was that nickname a possible insight as to why she was never really taken seriously in the Art World and her retreat to her own world at her home in England with a private Catholic Chapel for last 35 years of her life? Richard McLeod

Richard – I apologize for having overlooked this comment from you. I have no idea whether PCS liked the name Pixie or not. With her interest in story-telling for children, making children’s toys to raise money for the war effort, and dressing up as both a gypsy and a Jamaican story-teller, I would think she would encourage the nickname in informal settings, although obviously not in her professional life. She was described by many as being very humorous. Perhaps she left the name behind when she set up the retreat for priests, however, even then she was unconventional in that she illustrated the outside of her home and chapel despite the protests of her neighbors.

I have been researching the work of Pamela Coleman Smith with special attention to her Tarot designs for the Waite Rider Pack.
I have noticed that she does not use blue in any of the designs. Is there anybody out there who may either know the reason why or who may be able to suggest a reason for this?

I owned one of the replica tarot card that she paint, I get this card as a pressent for my birthday, from my father lovers, she found this card in amsterdam at himalaya store,

At the first time, the store won’t allowed her to buy this card, bcose this is the only replica cards they have, but after long negosiaton, she get the card, and now the replica card is my and I use it this lovely card to help other solving they problem,, I really love this card so much, I give name for this card, his name is “tee”

I’m so lucky having one of the replica RWS card.. And this is my treasure

Its a darn shame to put it extremely mildly how such a talented artist as Pamela Colman Smith was treated by the art establishment in the UK. OTOH she’s probably get the same or very similar treatment in the US. I mean taking work from men. Give me a break. Women back then and now deserve work. Wish you well, Mary, here on wordpress.com
I’m on wordpress.com

Mary: I was curious if you have seen the relative scarce study of PCS: by Melinda Boyd Parsons: “To All Believers: the Art of Pamela Colman Smith: [Exhibition] Delaware Art Museum, September 11-October 19, 1975, the Art Museum, Princeton University, November 4-December 7, 1975? Have you ever seen a copy?

[…] Sadly, she was apparently not cut into the any of the income flow from the Waite Tarot deck or else she would not have lived in such impoverished circumstances at the end of her life. Heaps more info re her and the set she was in here. […]

Love her soft brush strokes. Very feminine. A hero for women. Her life was typical of the destitution many women of her era suffered. Mary K is also one of my heroes for her lovely and informative work with the Tarot.

Hello Mary, I was born on September 18, 1951 and had been trying to find out more about Pamela Coleman Smith before the internet…to find very little. This is very exciting, sends a tingle down my spine to see her artwork beyond the Tarot deck…thank you all for this information.

Richard, you wondered if PCS wasn’t taken seriously due to her nickname “Pixie.” Speaking from a background in galleries, antique art and collectors, I can tell you that illustrators in general often went (and still go) unacknowledged. Her gender and nickname were just icing on the metaphorical cake of artistic obscurity. For example, we’ve all heard of Currier and Ives, but they were publishers, while Fanny Palmer and other artists were their illustrators.

The irony, of course, is that PCS is now one of the best known and most influential artists in the TAROT world while STILL being little known within the ART world. People who know of Alfred Stieglitz may never have encountered PCS – not surprising, since so much of her work was in illustration and stage design, which aren’t perceived to be in the same lofty (aka snobbish?) class as gallery-&-museum “fine art”. (That has also been the fate of photography, ceramics, fiber arts, anything classified as a practical craft, although this attitude has been very gradually shifting over the last few decades.)

The Georgie O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, included PCS in a recent exhibit, “Georgia O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle” (9/21/07 – 1/13/08). Her association with Stieglitz gives her a resurrected art-world credibility, but most people who saw her work at O’K had no idea of the scope of her impact on tarot art. http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/more-past-exibits.html

Pamela Colman Smith: the most influential unknown artist in the world?

I have enjoyed reading with the rider smith Tarot deck for many years, what surprised me was from the time Pamela had lived in Cornwall bude i was told recently that my fathers relations and lived just around the corner from her street at the time when she was still alive in 1951. It just reminds how sad Kaplan must of felt when he himself had no idea who she was before he had discovered the importance of this tarot deck that everyone knows about now?

I just wondered did Pamela ever keep a printed version of this deck back when it first got printed in 1910? i believe there was a letter she had written to someone that she had the new printed decks ready?

Kass – Yes, a lot of women artists through the ages were barely recognized in their own time, and still only a few have been reclaimed. Pamela’s belongings were dispersed and long lost so we don’t know what she kept or didn’t keep. And, yes, elsewhere on this blog is a copy of the letter she wrote when the deck was first coming out that mentioned that she’d just completed a very big job for very little cash.
Mary

On the internet I’ve come across a couple of sketches Pamela Colman Smith made during her transatlantic crossing in May 1900. These sketches are of herself, Edy Craig and her Uncle Bramy (Bram Stoker). Unfortunately, the sketches were not properly referenced and I have no idea where they come from. By any chance do you know where these sketches are from?

Paul, I’ve only seen them on the internet like you have. Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin have been researching PCS for a book coming out late this year. If anyone knows, it’s probably them. You can get in touch with them through Tarotprofessionals.com.

Reblogged this on Tezzatipoca and commented:
More works from the artist who made the Waite-Smith tarot a possibility. Arthur Edward Waite may have conceived the cards, but Pamela Coleman Smith brought them to life, and it is her artwork we stare at every day.

I find it incredible that so few sources acknowledge that Pamela Colman Smith was a Women of Color. This is a critical point in her biography that often gets overlooked. Perhaps it is her lightness of skin tone but the whitewashing of mystical and spiritual topics needs to be a thing of the past. Colman Smith was a revolutionary figure for her time and she deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated for her artistic tarot achievements as a Black woman (and possibly LGBTQ identifying individual). A phenomenal accomplishment especially considering it was more than 100 years ago!

If you have any facts to support this I’d love to see them – please! I just spent the last year working on a book about Pamela Colman Smith with Stuart Kaplan and several other people and we looked long and hard into this.

Pamela was born in a London suburb. We have been unable to find any indication of either of her parents being in Jamaica before they moved there when she was 10 years old. She was described by several people as looking Japanese or Chinese as well as a vague “mixed-race.” She played these up as well as wearing both flamboyant and Jamaican clothing – the latter as a professional storyteller of Jamaican folk tales. A photograph of a grandparent shows dark curly hair like hers, and she was close to both her prominent Brooklyn mother’s and father’s families as noted by the society pages of the times. It is hard to acknowledge something for which there is no proof, only opinions.